Museum of Art
Artist: Filippo Bellini (Italian, ca.1550-1603)
Medium: pen and brown ink, brown wash over black chalk on paper
Dimensions: 10 13/16 in. x 8 in. (27.46 cm. x 20.32 cm.)
Credit Line: Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III
Accession Number: 1811.4
- pilgrim with staff within circle (similar to Briquet 7567).
Type: watermark
Location:
Materials: - "No. 8 Coregio"
Type: inscription
Location: verso of old mount (removed)
Materials:
- James Bowdoin III( Collector, Boston) - 1811.
- Bowdoin College Museum of Art( Museum, Brunswick, Maine) 1811- . Bequest
- Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College
- Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 5/17/1985 - 7/7/1985)
- Clark Art Institute. ( 9/14/1985 - 10/27/1985)
- University of Kansas. ( 1/19/1986 - 3/2/1986)
- Art Gallery of Ontario. ( 5/17/1986 - 6/29/1986)
- Drawing on Basics
- Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 10/14/1993 - 12/19/1993)
- Monotheism & Masculinity
- Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 10/5/2004 - 11/7/2004)
Type: catalogue Author: H. Johnson Document Title: Catalogue of the Bowdoin College Art Collections Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Reference: no. 4 Remarks: (as Correggio) Publisher: Bowdoin College Section Title: Pt. 1, The Bowdoin Drawings Date: 1885 Author: Rev. F. H. Allen Document Title: The Bowdoin Collection Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Location: pt. 1 Reference: repr. Remarks: (as Correggio); (five parts of four illustrations each, with individual texts) Publisher: Bowdoin College Date: 1886 Type: catalogue Document Title: Bowdoin Museum of Fine Arts, Walker Art Building Edition: 4th Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Reference: no. 4 Remarks: (as Correggio) Publisher: Bowdoin College Section Title: Descriptive Catalogue of the Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings and . . . Date: 1930 Author: [H. C. Siber] Document Title: Connoisseur, vol. 120, no. 506 Location: pp. 119 Reference: repr. fig. 9 Remarks: (as sixteenth-century italian influenced by Correggio) Section Title: James Bowdoin and His Collection of Drawings with Notes on . . . Date: 1947 Type: exhibition catalogue Author: David P. Becker Document Title: Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Location: pp. 92-93 Reference: no. 42 (illus) Publisher: Bowdoin College Date: 1985
Presumably on the basis of the old inscription, this sheet was traditionally given to Correggio, until Sir Robert Witt and Hans Tietze disposed of that attribution. Lawrence Turcic attributed it to Bellini, whose draftsmanship was first clarified by Catherine Monbeig Goguel. She has accepted the Bellini attribution for the Bowdoin drawing.
The strongly emphasized hand gestures and the fluid pen and wash technique of the Bowdoin drawing are characteristic of Bellini's style (Monbeig Goguel 1975, 353-54). Comparable sheets are in the Hermitage, the Louvre, and the Metropolitan Museum. The saint at the lower left can be identified as St. Andrew by his attributes, a large cross and a fish. No painting for which this sheet is a study has been identified, but Bellini produced a number of similar compositions of the Virgin and Child adored by saints and angels (Monbeig Goguel 1975, 353).
David P. Becker (edited by Sarah Cantor)
References:
Monbeig Goguel, Catherine. "Filippo Bellini da Urbino della Scuola del Baroccio." Master Drawings 13, no. 4 (Winter 1975): 347-70 and 405-24.
Artist Biography:
Although once believed to have been student of Federico Barocci (c. 1535-1612), the most important artist in Urbino in the later half of the 16th century, Filippo Bellini’s early training has not been traced. He presumably began his career in Urbino, as he is documented in the city in 1576. Records and surviving paintings indicate that he then spent most of his career in the province of Ancona and at Macerata. He worked primarily for the clergy, painting altarpieces and decorations for parish churches and oratories. Stylistically, his paintings are influenced by Barocci as well as Venetian art and late 16th century Roman artists, particularly Federico Zuccaro (1540/2-1609).
David P. Becker (edited by Sarah Cantor)
Commentary credited to David P. Becker (or not otherwise captioned) appeared in his catalogue Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College (Brunswick: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1985).